NOTES: despite a very strong cast, El
día de la boda is ultimately a disappointing film. Most of the
running time is assigned to the Enrique Rambal plot, with some secondary
attention paid to Elsa Aguirre's character's problems with her daughter.
Mauricio Garcés, although nominally part of the Aguirre plot, only
gets to shine in a couple of irrelevant scenes (however, Garcés and
Aguirre were the primary focus of the sequel, El matrimonio es
como el demonio). This means that far too much footage is left for
the insufferable young couple played by Irma Lozano and José
Roberto Hill. The conclusion is much too long, and the script wasn't that
amusing to begin with, let alone sustain a long than usual (115 minutes)
picture.

The film begins and ends with a wedding. As the picture opens, three
couples are leaving a church where a friend's daughter has just been
married. The three men are business partners: Ricardo, Raúl and
Arturo. Ricardo is married to Adriana; they have a 19-year-old daughter
(Marta), and two young sons; Arturo is married to Elena, but has a roving
eye; Raúl and Hilda are not married, but have a long-standing
romantic relationship (Hilda is divorced from an alcoholic and has a
daughter, Andrea).

Most of the plot revolves around Marta and her law-student boyfriend,
Rubén. Marta is three months' pregnant with their child, but the
couple has not told their parents. They want to get married, but know
Ricardo will oppose the match. Rubén tells his father, but
he and Marta can never find the right moment to inform the irascible
Ricardo. When Marta falls ill with an infection, she reveals the truth to
her mother, with the aid of kindly Dr. Aponte. However, the only way they
can break the news to Ricardo is to pretend Marta is at death's door;
Ricardo, shocked by the news, topples into a bookcase and is hit on the
head with a vase. Rubén trips on a rollerskate and breaks his leg.
However, the wedding goes off as scheduled, but Marta doesn't make it to
the reception, since she goes into labor and has to be taken right to a
hospital where she gives birth.

The film includes several other sub-plots. One of these involves
Hilda's relationship with her daughter, Andrea. Andrea, although she will
not openly say so, is ashamed of her mother's "free love" with
Raúl. She rebels by engaging in inappropriate (for the time)
behavior with her playboy boyfriend Carlos. Hilda, while she is
theoretically opposed to marrying just for the sake of propriety, is
worried that Andrea will see only the scandalous aspects of her life with
Raúl. Other, minor sub-plots feature the sexy Samanta, daughter of
Ramón, an old school friend of Arturo. Arturo and Raúl
encourage her to to say in Mexico and not go back to New York to marry her
fiance. Raúl is hired by a blonde gringa to be her divorce
lawyer.

The latter thread provides most of Mauricio Garcés' amusing
moments in the film. Bárbara (Amedee Chabot--dubbed with a deeper
voice than usual) enters Raúl's office, but her dress gets caught
on the door and ripped off, leaving her standing there in her underwear.
"If this is a trick to get me to reduce my fees--I'll do it!" Raúl
says. He talks to her in broken English: "Don't you want a little
cognac-ito?. . . Please put your beautiful seat on the chair . . . "
Bárbara says she wants a divorce from her insanely jealous husband.
Raúl agrees to take the case ("From now on you have your own Latin
lover") but reminds his secretary (in Spanish): "I'm not in to anyone, and
if it's a gringo, I'm out of the country."

Later, Bárbara visits Raúl at his house and says she is
now a rich widow, her husband having died suddenly. They play gin rummy,
using her inheritance as stakes, but Bárbara wins easily (this is a
funny sequence, without dialogue, as Garcés watches Chabot
very carefully with each card that is played). Socrates, Raúl's
major-domo, tells Raúl that Bárbara's husband was from
Chicago and died in Las Vegas: "Get this gangster out of here!"
Raúl orders.

Aside from these and few other mildly amusing scenes, El día
de la boda is only fair entertainment and largely a waste of a
dynamite cast.